Sam the Amazing Dancing Cow

So our final days in Buenos Aires were pretty exciting once the weather improved. We managed to get to San Telmo and La Boca in the end, they are both very old parts of the city with cobbled streets and pretty squares and, in La Boca, very brightly painted houses. It's the old port area and apparently people used to nick the left over paint from the ships for their houses. It's also where all the immigrants and prostitutes came up with the tango in the late 19th century so we (I) decided we should do an open air tango lesson in the square along with a bunch of other tourists. If nothing else we certainly provided some early evening entertainment for the locals who stood around pointing, laughing and occasionally grasping us by the hands in a desperate attempt to help. We undoubtedly mastered some of the VERY basic steps. According to Sam it was my fault that we didn't manage the slightly more complex moves as I "laughed like a drain" whenever he started swooping his leg around. It was all rather comical as you can imagine.

Our other important achievement was the consumption of four of the best steaks we've had since being in Argentina. I think they even beat our previous favourite meal, the first all-you-can-eat parillada in Ushuaia. I can't really explain how good they tasted, but the effect they had on Sam was very striking: a far-away look on his face, very deliberate, careful chewing, and the slow blinking of big brown eyes. Yes folks, it was almost as if he had actually turned into a cow.

So now we have left Buenos Aires and crossed the River Plate to Uruguay, a very sleepy, happy kind of place where everything shuts for hours and everyone gets around on bicycles or ancient mopeds. We started in Colonia del Sacramento, an old colonial port originally used by the Portuguese for smuggling goods into Buenos Aires. It's all very picturesque, crooked little houses, cobbled streets and bright white churches abound. Although I think the best thing was the spectacular sunset over the river, accompanied by a jug of clerico, a rather jolly concoction of white wine and fruit juice. We are now a little further up the river in a town called Carmelo which unfortunately I can't tell you much about as it's been absolutely belting down since we got here this morning. Hopefully the weather will improve tomorrow so we can see a bit of the place, then we're off on Saturday to Montevideo. We have also just done a massive rainy day session of photo adding so have a look at those if you get the chance www.flickr.com/photos/36031590@N00/

Bye for now, Sam says hello.